Say What Now

In his Equal Time column today, the New York Post's Phil Mushnick goes straight racist on the Nets' new logo as the team transitions from New Jersey to Brooklyn (with a little influence from Jay-Z, who owns 1.5 percent of the team):

As long as the Nets are allowing Jay-Z to call their marketing shots -- what a shock that he chose black and white as the new team colors to stress, as the Nets explained, their new "urban" home -- why not have him apply the full Jay-Z treatment?
Why the Brooklyn Nets when they can be the New York N------s? The cheerleaders could be the Brooklyn B----hes or Hoes. Team logo? A 9 mm with hollow-tip shell casings strewn beneath. Wanna be Jay-Z hip? Then go all the way!

Under fire this week from gay rights activists for a Sunday sermon in which he encouraged parents in his congregation to assault their kids if they showed signs of being gay, North Carolina pastor Sean Harris now claims he only was trying to be funny:

The second you see your son dropping that limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch.

Harris, who was preaching about gay marriage ahead of the state's upcoming vote on Amendment One, defended his support of the legislation. "What I do stand by is that the word of God makes it clear that effeminate behavior is ungodly," Harris said. "I'm not going to compromise on that."

Dan Rather joined George Stephanopoulos today on Good Morning America, where he doubled down on the 60 Minutes story in which he asserted that George W. Bush had deserted the Texas Air National Guard, and which got him fired from the network.

"We reported a true story. I am not at CBS now because I and my team reported a true story. It was a tough story, a story a lot of people didn't want to believe and it was subjected to a terrific propaganda barrage to discredit it."

Stephanopoulos asked Rather whether it was possible to know the entire truth without all of the documents.

"No, what story does anyone know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?. But we reported the truth and that is that President Bush -- later President Bush -- when he was in National Guard service, he was at least AWOL and we had a top general in the Army saying on the record he was a deserter. Now everybody makes mistakes. I made some, President Bush obviously made some. But because we reported that story, they put heavy pressure on the corporate entity and the corporate entity voted."

Footage from the event shows Santorum characterizing candidate Obama as "the anti-war government nig-" before stopping himself with a filled pause and abruptly heading in a different direction.

There are several alternate theories out there which suggest Santorum was trying to say something (relatively) innocuous, and merely stumbled in an unfortunate place. One such theory claims Santorum was actually calling Obama a "governmentnik." While plausible, "governmentnik" isn't really something someone's ever called anyone.

Having gone after pretty much every other "social malady" in the book, Rick Santorum is finally setting his sights on the big daddy of them all: Pornography.

In a statement that reads like something Anthony Comstock would have deemed "going too far," the GOP presidential candidate claims pornography "causes profound brain changes in both children and adults" and blasts the Justice Department for favoring "pornographers over children" by not enforcing obscenity laws.

Santorum continues: "[C]urrent federal 'obscenity' laws prohibit distribution of hardcore [obscene] pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier."

The former Pennsylvania Senator concludes by vowing that, as President, he will change the status quo as it concerns pornography.

It seems somewhat laughable, but can President Santorum really get rid of Internet porn if he set his mind to it? Yes, says UCLA Law Professor and noted blogger Eugene Volokh.

"If the government wanted to aggressively move against Internet pornography, it could do so," Volokh told The Daily Caller. "Here’s the deal: In most parts of the country, a lot of pornography on the Internet would plausibly be seen as obscene."

The law may be on his side, but, if he were to pursue his anti-porn crusade, Santorum would likely find rather quickly that the only thing still able to blur the lines of political affiliation is porn.

"I don't know how you make anybody watch," Corbett said. "Because you just have to close your eyes."

Not surprisingly, this didn't sit well with Democrats, who slammed Corbett for showing "a lack of understanding of medicine and women's reproductive health issues."

"It's unthinkable that he would so casually dismiss this by advising women to just close their eyes," said former Pennsylvania congressman Patrick Murphy. "Gov. Corbett's comments are disturbingly offensive, insensitive and out of touch."